Our next stop, after getting back into the States...after sitting in a line of cars for over an hour...with a 3 yr old that had to go to the bathroom so bad she cried for nearly half of it - not that she hadn't gone right before we left Magdalena, but anywho...our next stop was Tucson, Az.
Before we left on this trip I had pretty well planned out what each day would entail, the places we'd visit, etc. A few days before we left, Andrew mentioned to Fred Funk that we were going to be in Tucson for 2 days and told him our plans. Fred energetically told him to scrap our plans and went on to describe what we should do instead (dinner details and all). The change threw this type A a little off kilter, but I revived and we followed through on Fred's suggestions - he did live in Tucson for over 20 years after all. We had a fantastic time.
Tuesday night, after settling into our hotel, swimming and doing some much needed laundry, we headed off to Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse. It was definitely our most expensive meal of the trip, but good food and a lot of fun, too. PP is in a little "old West town" in the heart of Tucson. So, we got to take in a Western Stunt Show after supper too. The kids loved it.
Notice the ties on my boys? When you walk in the door to PP, you see a sign that says "No ties allowed." If you wear a tie, sometime during your meal, your waitress walks out, ringing a big ole cow bell and loudly announces, "We've got some law breakers here. What should we do with them?" The crowd yells out, "Hang 'em!" or some other pleasantry, and then after some coaxing, "Cut off their ties!" So, she then ceremoniously cuts off the ties of the offenders. The rafters of this place have literally thousands of ties hanging off them. Of course, Fred had told Andrew this, so they wore ties Andrew should have gotten rid of years ago. Our boys, on the other hand, were a little surprised! The looks on their faces were too cute once they realized we were ok with the ties getting cut.Wednesday morning we headed to Desert Museum, which is much more a zoo/botanical gardens than a museum. Huge Saguaro Cacti. As we were walking along my kids more than once mused - Cactuses? Cactee? Cacti? to the confusion of the elderly people we passed who apparently don't appreciate Veggie Tales as much as our kids do. Fantastic
place!
We were there until late in the afternoon. Then we met up with Daniel and Diane Wuthrich for supper at Oreganos. Our deep dish pizza was great, but the conversation was even better. We had a lot of fun catching up with the two of them and even got in a game of Adventures in Odyssey's "Answer That" which got D&D on my kids' good side permanently. It's always fun to be with people who love Adventures in Odyssey as much as we do.We had planned on going to church with Daniel and Diane, but before we met, Daniel told us that Tucson church was having their yearly business meeting that night and since I don't even attend Morton's business meeting - it's never sounded appealing with 4 kids in tow - we decided to opt out and head back to our hotel to swim a bit more instead.
The next day we got up bright and early again. Did I mention that it took our bodies a good week to get used to the 2 hr time difference? We were regularly getting up at 6 (yes, this night owl just wrote up at 6......am) and going to bed around 8:30. One of the many joys of staying in hotels is that everybody gets to go to bed and get up at the same time - by our third night or so Andrew was kicking me out of the room to go walk the hallways while he settled kids down. I think he decided it was easier to settle down 4 energetic kids in 1 little room than settle down 4 energetic kids and their stressed out mother because of the 1 little room.
On to Sabino Canyon. Gorgeous hiking. Beautiful natural pools formed by snow melt cascading down the mountains and hills. Per Fred's recommendation, our kids wore swim suits and had a blast.
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